Specialty Lab and Test Equipment
Specialty lab and test equipment includes specialty or proprietary products and accessories related to laboratory testing. This lab equipment may include specialized instruments that are used to measure electrical quantities such as voltage, current, resistance, frequency and signal power as well as specialized test equipment for measuring signal power. Specialized electronic testing equipment may require highly specialized data acquisition systems for digitizing and processing multiple sensor or signal inputs designed to monitor, analyze and/or control systems and processes. Signal conditioning includes the amplification, filtering, converting, and other processes required to make sensor output suitable for rereading by computerized testing equipment.
Chart recorders and strip charts are data acquisition tools that are often used with specialty lab and test equipment and are used to generate a plot, graph or other visualization of data versus time. Not infrequently data loggers and data recorders are used with specialty lab and test equipment to acquire digital data from sensors and other signals. Specialized lab equipment takes advantage of them to store data for subsequent downloads to a host PC, but may also be used to provide real-time features such as monitors and alarms. Sometimes environmental test chambers are used in concert with specialty lab and test equipment to ensure the reliability of industrial products, especially electronic items, through prolonged exposure to one or more environmental parameters. Logic analyzers are used with specialty lab equipment to characterize and debug hardware, design and test firmware and software, and perform synthesis integration. An important complement to specialty lab and test equipment, spectrum analyzers and signal analyzers display raw, unprocessed signal information such as voltage, power, period, wave shape, sidebands, and frequency. They can provide the user of specialized lab equipment with a clear and precise window into the frequency spectrum.
